The discovery of aminoglycosides began in the 1940s with the isolation of streptomycin from Streptomyces griseus. Since the 1940s, other aminoglycosides have been discovered and synthesized. These include neomycin which is obtained or isolated from Streptomyces fradiae; kanamycin which is isolated from Streptomyces kanamyceticus; gentamicin which is isolated from Micromonospora purpurea; tobramycin which is isolated from Streptomyces tenedrarius; sisomicin isolated from micromonospora inyoesis; amikacin which is a semisynthetic derivative of Kanamycin A; and netilmicin which is a semisynthetic derivative of sisomicin. Amikacin has the broadest spectrum of antimicrobial activity of all the aminoglycosides. It also has a unique resistance to the immunoglycoside-inactivating enzymes.
The aminoglycosides are polar-cations which consist of two or more amino sugars joined in a glycosidic linkage to a hexose nucleus, which is usually in a central position. The aminoglycosides are used primarily to treat infections caused by gram-negative bacteria. However, aminoglycosides have been used in recent years to treat bacteria from the genus Mycobacterium. For example, amikacin has shown to be effective against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Aminoglycosides have also been tested against M.avium infections including M. avium-intracellulare complex (MAC) which is a group of related acid-fast organisms that grow only slightly faster than M. tuberculosis and can be divided into a number of serotypes. At the beginning of the twentieth century, tuberculosis was the most prevalent cause of death in the United States. By the late 1940s, with the advent of streptomycin, tuberculosis infection had decreased substantially. Since the mid-1980s with the appearance of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome, tuberculosis again began to emerge as a major health problem. Further, the new cases of tuberculosis showed resistance to many of the available antibiotic therapies. Similarly MAC, once considered rare, is now the most common systemic bacterial type infections in patients suffering from acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Hence, the search for an effective antibiotic has intensified.
Although the aminoglycosides have been useful in treating infections, the use of these antibiotics is not free from toxicity and side effects. Aminoglycosides may produce irreversible vestibular, cochlear, and renal toxicity. The two main toxic effects of aminoglycosides are ototoxicity and nephrotoxicity. Studies have found that the aminoglycosides antibiotics may cause polyuria, decreased urinary osmolality, proteinuria, enzymuria, glycosuria, and a decrease in the rate of glomerular filtration. Some investigators believe that nephrotoxicity results from the accumulation of the aminoglycosides in the renal cortex because of the long half-life of the agents in that tissue.
Liposomes are microscopic vesicles made, in part, from phospholipids which form closed, fluid filled spheres when dispersed with water. Phospholipid molecules are polar, having a hydrophilic ionizable head and two hydrophobic tails consisting of long fatty acid chains. Thus, when sufficient phospholipid molecules are present with water, the tails spontaneously associate to exclude water while the hydrophilic phosphate heads interact with water. The result is a bilayer membrane in which the fatty acid tails converge in the newly formed membrane's interior and the polar heads point in opposite directions toward an aqueous medium. These bilayer membranes can be caused to form closed spheres known as liposomes. The polar heads at the inner surface of the membrane point toward the aqueous interior of the liposome. At the opposite surface of the spherical membrane, the polar heads interact with the surrounding aqueous medium. As the liposomes are formed, water soluble molecules can be incorporated into the aqueous interior, and lipophilic molecules will tend to be incorporated into the lipid bilayer. Liposomes may be either multilamellar, like an onion with liquid separating many lipid bilayers, or unilamellar, with a single bilayer surrounding an entirely liquid center.
There are many types of liposome preparation techniques which may be employed and which produce various types of liposomes. These can be selected depending on the use, the chemical intended to be entrapped, and the type of lipids used to form the bilayer membrane. The requirements which must be considered in producing a liposome preparation are similar to those of other controlled release mechanisms. They are as follows: (1) high percent of chemical entrapment; (2) increased chemical stability; (3) low chemical toxicity; (4) rapid method of production; and (5) reproducible size distribution.
The first method described to encapsulate chemicals in liposomes involved production of multilamellar vesicles (MLVs). Methods for encapsulating chemicals in MLVs are known in the art.
Liposomes can also be formed as unilamellar vesicles (UVs), which generally have a size less than 1 .mu.m. There are several techniques known in the art which are used to produce unilamellar liposomes.
Smaller unilamellar vesicles can be formed using a variety of techniques. By dissolving phospholipids in ethanol and injecting them into a buffer, the lipids will spontaneously rearrange into unilamellar vesicles. This provides a simple method to produce UVs which have internal volumes similar to that of those produced by sonication (0.2-0.5 L/mol/lipid). Sonication or extrusion (through filters) of MLVs also results in dispersions of UVs having diameters of up to 0.2 .mu.m, which appear as clear or translucent suspensions.
Another common method for producing small UVs is the detergent removal technique. Phospholipids are solubilized in either ionic or non-ionic detergents such as cholates, Triton X, or n-alkylglucosides. The drug is then mixed with the solubilized lipid-detergent micelles. Detergent is then removed by one of several techniques: dialysis, gel filtration, affinity chromatography, centrifugation, ultrafiltration. The size distribution and entrapment efficiencies of the UVs produced this way will vary depending on the details of the technique used.
The therapeutic use of liposomes includes the delivery of drugs which are normally toxic in the free form. In the liposomal form the toxic drug may be directed away from the sensitive tissue and targeted to selected areas. Liposomes can also be used therapeutically to release drugs, over a prolonged period of time, reducing the frequency of administration. In addition, liposomes can provide a method for forming an aqueous dispersion of hydrophobic drugs for intravenous delivery.
When liposomes are used to target encapsulated drugs to selected host tissues, and away from sensitive tissues, several techniques can be employed. These procedures involve manipulating the size of the liposomes, their net surface charge as well as the route of administration. More specific manipulations have included labeling the liposomes with receptors or antibodies for particular sites in the body.
The route of delivery of liposomes can also affect their distribution in the body. Passive delivery of liposomes involves the use of various routes of administration, e.g., intravenous, subcutaneous and topical. Each route produces differences in localization of the liposomes. Two common methods used to actively direct the liposomes to selected target areas are binding either antibodies or specific receptor ligands to the surface of the liposomes. Antibodies are known to have a high specificity for their corresponding antigen and have been shown to be capable of being bound to the surface of liposomes, thus increasing the target specificity of the liposome encapsulated drug.
Since the chemical composition of many drugs precludes their intravenous administration, liposomes can be very useful in adapting these drugs for intravenous delivery. Many hydrophobic drugs, including cyclosporine, fall into this category because they cannot be easily dissolved in a water-based medium and must be dissolved in alcohols or surfactants which have been shown to cause toxic reactions in vivo. Liposomes, composed of lipids, with or without cholesterol, are nontoxic. Furthermore, since liposomes are made up of amphipathic molecules, they can entrap hydrophilic drugs in their interior space and hydrophobic molecules in their lipid bilayer. Although methods for making liposomes are well known in the art, it is not always possible to determine a working formulation without undue experimentation.
Liposomal formulations containing aminoglycosides have been prepared. Many of the preparations include aerosol formulations using MLVs. Other formulations contain a large amount of negatively charged lipids, generally greater than 20%, to increase retention time or circulation half-life. Problems associated with aminoglycosides liposomal formulations include short retention time in the system because of RES uptake. Attempted formulations in the art have also resulted in liposomal aminoglycosides that are unstable--both on the shelf and in serum.
Thus, it is a desideratum to provide for a novel formulation which would increase the retention time of an aminoglycoside in a mammal's system and which can deliver more drug with superior efficacy and lower toxicity than free drug. It is also desirable to provide a process which allows the manufacture of a clear, stable and efficacious aminoglycoside liposome suspension because of the inability of those of ordinary skill to produce a therapeutically effective aminoglycoside unilamellar liposomal formulation having an average particle size of less than 100 nm, preferably with a high drug to total lipid ratio.